“Should you be paralyzed by fear?
I encourage you to look to Palestinians in Gaza, who, in the face of annihilation, turn the hum of drones into music for children, trash into makeshift weights to work out. Who turn tents into classrooms, who strung Eid lights onto the rubble of what once was their homes. Who marched home twice and held wedding ceremonies for those who found love in a time of Nakba. Take courage from Munira and Najar, who tell us that mothers still give birth under fire, raise children in tents, and teach them that love survives even in war. Palestinians who have had far less comfort and the promise of safety than we do have refused to surrender. And neither should we.” Noura Erakat said, concluding her address to a standing ovation from UCLA students, faculty, and community members.
On Nov. 13, 2025, UCLA’s Palestinian Student Union, in collaboration with the Consortium for Palestine Studies at UCLA, hosted Erakat for an event titled “Revisiting Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination.”
Noura Erakat is a Palestinian-American activist, human rights attorney, and professor of Africana studies and criminal justice at Rutgers University. A leading legal scholar, she is the author of “Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine,” co-founder of the magazine Jadaliyya, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Palestine Studies and Human Geography.
Erakat opened her discussion by addressing the recent U.S.-facilitated Gaza ceasefire, which she said was “a unilateral measure imposed by perpetrators of the genocide,” arguing that it lacked enforceable mechanisms, clear withdrawal terms, and international oversight. Even after the agreement, she reminded the audience, Israel has brutally killed 242 Palestinians and injured 622 others. It has breached the agreement’s terms, particularly given the continued closure of the Rafah crossing and the minimal aid entering Gaza. Additionally, it continues to hold over 9,000 Palestinians hostage, and there have been ongoing arrests, murders, and destruction in the West Bank. “For 733 days of the cruelest phase of the ongoing Nakba,” she said, “we seem to witness the atrocity that we were sure would be the final straw: the spraying of a five year old girl, 335 bullets; the murder of the World Central Kitchen Staff; the massacre of 15 paramedics, zip tied and buried along with their ambulance in a mass grave; the burning of children alive in displacement camps; the burning of Ahmed Mansour, at his desk in a press tent; the burning of Shaban al-Dalou while connected to an IV drip on a hospital bed; the declaration of a level five famine; the confirmation that humanitarian distribution sites are, indeed, sadistic death traps, that 83% of the casualties are civilian and yet that final straw moment never came.”
The agreement only reinforces the concentration of Palestinians from the river to the sea into fragmented zones that subvert their autonomy, while allowing the continued murder, kidnapping, starvation, and terrorization. That terror, Erakat noted, is documented with Israeli soldiers “who had fun listening” to Palestinians burning after bombing them; who raped Palestinian men and women and received a standing ovation for it; who sang and danced to music about burning Palestinian villages; who proudly shot unarmed Palestinians, exclaiming “they couldn’t understand what was so important about the corpses.” Yet, she said, global order “considers Israelis innocent, regardless of what they do, and Palestinians guilty, regardless of how much they suffer.”
Throughout the lecture, Erakat situated the current events into a broader critique of Zionism as racism. Citing Palestinian jurist Fayez Sayegh and the United Nations’ 1975 Resolution 3379, which declared Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination, she argued that Zionism operates on segregation, Jewish exclusivity, and Palestinian displacement. This framework—and the rescinding of the 1975 resolution as a condition of the Oslo Accords—have established the roots of the occupation, apartheid, and genocide we witness today. These conditions, she said, are “a direct outcome of a refusal to dismantle apartheid when confronted with its reality. A refusal to consider how Zionism, predicated on the twin pillars of genocidal expansion and territorial consolidation, necessitates permanent occupation, necessitates apartheid, and necessitates genocide, to achieve its goals.”
Erakats’ reminder resonated with the UCLA community, one that organized one of the strongest Palestinian Liberation Encampments in April 2024 and endured one of the most violent attacks in the university’s history when a Zionist mob armed with chemical weapons, sticks, pipes, and fireworks, attempted to maim the students.
Two years later, the repression only advances as policing on campus increases, and student activists are suspended, diplomas are withheld, and impunity for the Zionist perpetrators is ongoing. Even her sold-out event faced attempts by the administration to shut it down, reflecting the institutional pattern of silencing Palestinian advocacy to preserve “neutrality,” maintain investments, and suppress movements that challenge state violence and the UC system’s complicity. Still, Erakat urged students to persist. “We have a choice,” she said, “we can confront Zionism and Zionist logic, or we can normalize genocide.”